Simple MailLists

This section describes a maillist function that requires you to manually enter e-mail addresses. Your account also includes a subscribable maillist function that automates the process of maillist signups. CLICK HERE for subscribable maillist instructions.

 
What is a MailList?

A maillist is basically a list of email addresses that you group together and name. By naming a group, you are able to send mail to every email address simply by sending an email to groupname@yourdomain.com.

For example:

• You have 12 friends who are interested in your research. Normally, you'd have to type each email address individually in the To: box of your email program.
• You decide to set up a maillist, and name the list research. You add each of the email addresses to your research maillist.
• Now, when e-mail is sent to research@yourdomain.com, everybody on the list will receive it.

Mail Lists can accommodate up to 1000 e-mail addresses. Messages sent to the mail list cannot exceed 75 kilobytes in size. The maillist address must appear in the TO field of the e-mail; you cannot CC or BCC a maillist.

Your control panel allows to easily manage your mail lists. You can create a list, edit an existing mail list, delete an existing mail list, and/or password-protect a mail list. You can also create subscribable mail lists to allow visitors to automatically place themselves on your mailing lists.

 
Creating a MailList

Creating a maillist is easy.

1. Select "Mail Lists" from the left navigation bar.
2. Select "Mail Lists" from the top navigation bar.
3. Enter the name of the maillist you want to create. Do not use spaces or any special characters (&$%^ etc)
4. Enter the e-mail addresses you wish to receive copies of mail sent to the list.
5. If you want to password-protect the mail list, enter your desired password in the Password field (see the Password Protecting a Maillist section for more information.
6. To save the list, click the "Save Mail List" button.

Be sure to add only valid, deliverable email addresses. You do not need to fill up all of the text boxes. Be sure to add yourself to the maillist if you want to receive a copy of your emails.

 
IMPORTANT NOTE:

Be sure to send e-mail to your list in the TO field of your email. If the maillist is in the CC or BCC fields, the mail will not be distributed.

 
Editing Maillists

1. Select "Mail Lists" from the left navigation bar.
2. Select "Mail Lists" from the top navigation bar.
3. Select the mail list you want to edit from the list of mail lists.
4. Click the "Edit Mail List" button.

The entries in your mail list will appear. You can change the name of the list, add/edit/delete e-mail addresses, etc.

Note that when you edit the list, new empty fields appear so that you can additional entries.

 
IMPORTANT NOTE:

When you remove e-mail addresses from the list, make sure that you do not have any blank lines in the middle of the list. If you save a maillist with a blank line in the middle, the maillist will delete all entries below the blank line.

 
Deleting MailLists

1. Select "Mail Lists" from the left navigation bar.
2. Select "Mail Lists" from the top navigation bar.
3. Select the mail list you want to edit from the list of mail lists.
4. Click the "Delete Maillist" button.

 
IMPORTANT NOTE:

You will not receive a confirmation screen! Make sure that you have selected the correct maillist for deletion.

You will receive a confirmation that the mail list has been deleted.

 
Password-Protecting a MailList

Once you've created a MailList, anyone can send e-mail to it. If you want to control who has access to the list, you can password protect it. You can include a password by following the instructions above, or by editing the list manually. To manuall edit your maillist, follow these instructions:

1. Locate the maillists subdirectory within your home directory structure. The system path will be /home/yourdomain/maillists. Note that this directory is above your www directory, so you'll need to edit the file in telnet, or FTP the file to your local computer, edit it, and the re-upload it (make sure the upload is in ASCII format.)



2. Within the maillists subdirectory, you'll find a file with the same name as the maillist you've created. This file is simply a list of all e-mail addresses you've added to the maillist. For the "research" maillist we created above, the file named "research" will look like this:




joe@joe.com
fred@fred.com
sally@sally.com
george@george.com

3. Simply edit the file so that the first line includes the desired password followed by 4 blank lines. For this example, assume that we want to use the password: res5409Z. Just insert that password followed by 4 blank lines on the first line, like this:




res5409Z
 
 
 
 
joe@joe.com
fred@fred.com
sally@sally.com
george@george.com

Once the maillist file has been saved with the password, in order to send mail to the maillist, all you have to do is insert the password on the first line of the body of the message, then insert 4 blank lines before the actual message you wish to send to the list.

 
IMPORTANT NOTE:

Password-protected maillist messages must be sent in plain-text format. HTML formatted mail will not work.

E-mail sent with the password included will be distributed to the maillist. E-mail sent to the list without the password will be redirected to your primary e-mail address (yourdomain@yourdomain.com) -- as long as you have e-mail aliasing enabled.

 

 

 

Source: http://www.hostingmanual.net/plusmail/maillists.shtml